About Us

Morning Star Mission

We at Morning Star School are dedicated to providing a safe learning environment that enriches the whole child. We are committed to promoting academic achievement, fostering creative problem solving that inspires respect for others and developing a sense of dignity and personal responsibility for self and community.

Chief Morning Star

Our school is named after Northern Cheyenne Chief Morning Star. He was a very courageous man and was willing to
help his people survive. He was known for his bravery but was not an
orator. He was also known by the name, Dull Knife, as the white people
said that he did not sharpen his knife to use against other men. He was
named Morning Star by his family because when he was a small boy, he
would wake up early and walk out on the hills to look at the morning
star.

Morning Star was born about 1828 in what is
now Colorado. He was made a war chief of his tribe but chose not to
fight in the Battle of the Little Big Horn which occurred in 1876.
However, later that year, the U.S. Cavalry under Colonel Mackenzie found
Morning Star's winter camp in the Big Horn Mountains and moved Morning
Star and his band of approximately one thousand people to Indian
Territory in Oklahoma to be with the Southern Cheyenne. It took them one
hundred days to walk the distance.

Because Morning Star's people were so sick
while in Oklahoma, they requested returning to the plains of the north.
All but approximately two hundred ninety seven people had died. Even
though the government had agreed that they should be moved north there
was no effort made to do so. Many of their band died, so they started
north on their own. There were approximately eighty nine men and one
hundred forty six women and children leaving the Southern Cheyenne. They
were pursued by two thousand troops and many civilians. The Indians
headed toward the Black Hills and after about six weeks they split into
two groups. Most of the older people and children went with Morning
Star. The group with Morning Star was captured and taken to Fort
Robinson which is in Nebraska. At Fort Robinson they were told that they
had to return to the Southern Cheyenne. Morning Star petitioned the US
government to allow his people to return to what is now Montana. When
this was denied, Morning Star and his band refused to go back and said
that they would die right where they were. The captain at Fort Robinson
ordered the Cheyenne to be held prisoner for five days with no food,
water or wood to burn. The temperature was below zero. Again the
Cheyenne broke out and left on their own. There was fighting and in the
first hour more than half of the surviving warriors died. Many of the
Cheyenne were returned to Fort Robinson but Morning Star and some
members of his family had made it to Pine Ridge. After living with the
Sioux for some time, Morning Star finally returned to his home -
Montana.

Back in Montana, he counseled his people that
the only way they would survive in the world in which they would be
living was to be educated. Thus, our school is named after this brave man
who knew the value of education.